This week's GOP Debate focused primarily on foreign policy and national security. In addition to our failing economy, a good leader must be able to project the confidence of his/her nation onto the world stage. Currently, the US has done a mediocre job at this. It is not hard to believe that many nations out there do not like us. Many actually revile us and would love to see us as a nation fail (we are working on that now apparently). What are we doing to thwart their hopes? Are we trying to buy friendship? You'd be surprised at the answer to this question.

If you would like to see who we are sending money to, US Foreign Aid by Country is a great place to start. This map shows the nations of the world and how much they received/are supposed to get for the last several years. Interestingly enough, we are giving money to places like China ($17.8 million), Pakistan ($1.38 billion), Russia ($66.1 million), and get this, North Korea ($3.4 million). Is anyone else disturbed by this?

Take a look at this map, hover over the different countries, add up some of the figures and then, please feel free to get violently ill. Our government, in 2011, gave $661,951,000 in foreign assistance to South America (every nation except French Guiana). I wonder what we could have done with that much money here at home?

I'm going to leave this post right here to allow you to visit that site, mull over some numbers, and get sufficiently angry. Tomorrow, I'll do a comparison of domestic spending vs. foreign spending.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving.